The art of blending is not limited to the world of cooking and nutrition. In fact, blending can be found in a boundless range of extra-culinary activities: film, art and music are all nourished by often widely varying influences, “blended” into a whole. For example, let’s look at blending in music, where two or more genres are combined to create a different type of song, sometimes even better and always more original. Pieces of this kind are known as “mash-ups“. In other words, a mash-up is a song created by merging two or more songs, by methods similar to remixing or sound montage.

 

This genre is not new: the first experiments in this direction, such as a jazz composition combining the US and British national anthems, date from as long ago as the early ’50s. It is rare to hear famous musicians venturing into mash-up, probably due to force of stylistic habit, but gradually more and more important artists have started to use this technique. Today, the Internet is full of more or less amateur mash-ups, thanks to the technology that enables everyone to make music: search the web and you will be surprised how good and original some of them are. Power of blending.